Aishwarya Jha is a writer, designer and entrepreneur from New Delhi, India. Her work recently appeared in a digital anthology by Oxford University and is forthcoming in multiple literary journals. In another life, her award-winning one-act plays were performed around the world, in addition to being taught at workshops. Her debut novel will be published in 2024 and she is drafting her second as part of the Asian Women Writers programme.
Storm on the Ganges
First published elsewhere
I thought I knew storms
I had seen them before
cloudbursts
and heartbursts
splayed branches
missed appointments
wobbling skies
like jelly
we used to love jelly
we used to love storms
until
they wiggled
between our toes
and spread
spider-legs.
I thought I knew storms
but I didn’t see
her
sidling
out of bed
a grand jeté
and then a tap
not on the head
nor the shoulder
but in the pit of the stomach—
thud!
a giant bowling ball
flung
across the sky
flinging
falling
flinging
your soul
out
of your body
for a fraction
of
a light-year
it is
a light-thing
and the lightning
rips out
from
your shoes
the world
is a photo negative.
And all the while
the river
keening
leaping
a million white horses
a sea-monster or two
and others
you can’t name
in this
life
a million creatures
making their way
undeterred
like thoughts
to who-knows-where
but you want to know
so bad
you almost
join
them.
Spectres breathe
upon
the hills
in
slow
descent
and the charcoal trees
quiet
not frightened
and neither are you
though there is terror
there is fire
in how the rain
pelts
the stones
in how the night
falls
on the earth
like peeling leather
from
an old skirt.
Thud—
and suddenly
you can no longer take it
no, not the fury,
but the stasis
it can’t really be
so routine
so familiar
no
the last time
the plates tore apart
like cookies
and the oceans towered
and time was born—
it can’t really be
happening
while you sit
mosquito-netted
to screens
bleating
about delayed refunds
governments
and shards
of existence.
It can’t be,
and why doesn’t anyone
say it?
What else
is there
to talk about
but this—
this
which might,
with a flick
of its might,
swallow us,
screens and all?
What else
is there
but this
as morning
pales
over your shoulders
flushed surrender
between the planks
another phalanx
of drops
and
you think:
I thought I knew storms
I had seen life
before
I thought—
and I was wrong.
The Field Guide Poetry Magazine 